The holiday season is upon us!

The time for the giving of gifts and the airing of grievances is here!

since you have the entire internet upon which you may air your grievances, I will refrain from providing advice and wish you good fortune in that pursuit.

If you are like me, always needing ideas for gifts for those geeky friends of yours, then I am here with a few ideas to help you out.

Are your friends table top role players?

You may have heard of this thing called Dungeons and Dragons. It has a new edition out at the moment. The Players Handbook was released over the summer and the last of the core rule books will hit shelves on December 9th. If they have not already purchased it, the players hand book is a wonderful idea. It takes an iconic game and gives you a much simpler version than what was present in the 4th edition. The art is gorgeous, the text is well written, and the layout is joy to behold. You can easily find a copy at your friendly local game store or find a copy on Amazon.

If the price point on the 5th Edition, is a little bit outside of your price range, I would suggest Fate Core from Evil Hat a look. It is the newest edition of the Fate system which is found in games such as Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files. The game has a much more narrative bent with rules that are flexible enough to allow you to emulate a variety of genres without being bogged down in the minutia of rules. I really enjoy how the fate point economy allows failure and complications to allow characters to be bad-ass later in the game. You can pick up the book and pdf combo from the Evil Hat store for just $25. Not to shabby.

Are your friends comic readers?

Allow me to suggest that you introduce them to East of West by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta. This is a story about the end times in a world where the civil War and the world were altered by the crash of a comet. The end of times are upon the world and Death is the only one that can save humanity now. The art is beautiful and the story is weird and compelling. You have three of the four horsemen of apocalypse return as children and Death is searching for something. It is beguiling melange of civil war imagery, cyberpunk style, and funky spirituality that is easy to sink your teeth into. The first trade paperback is easily priced at $9.99.

If their tastes are more in the vein of super heroes, then allow me to recommend Forever Evil from DC comics. I know, something from the big two, how gauche! The thing is though, the story is really good! You get to see the New 52 go through a conflict where the heroes are missing and the villains are struggling to save the world. The different intros from Lex Luthor’s perspective are well worth the price of admission and the new Bizzaro is endearing and heart-wrenching. The hard back clocks in at $16 which is a great price for a gorgeous hardcover book.